


Steal That Smile From Your Face

by Nokomis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, set during DH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 13:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Ollivander and Luna were locked in the cellar of Malfoy Manor for months.





	Steal That Smile From Your Face

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://nokomis305.livejournal.com/148851.html).

Ollivander considered himself a cunning man, but eventually, exhausted, he admitted defeat.

He simply could not escape the Malfoy’s cellar.

*

He wasn’t alone the entire time. Other prisoners came and went like the tides, each trying the same tricks to escape, each failing.

Most were the older, jaded versions of children he’d once sold wands to. He attached woods and cores to them like honorary ribbons: maple, hawthorn, birch, dragon’s heartstring, unicorn hair.

He’d found long ago that children grew to resemble their wands, or maybe wands simply matched themselves to children akin to themselves. Some were unyielding, some flexible.

None lasted.

*

His bones were aching from the chill of winter when she stumbled into the room, letting out a soft cry and falling to her knees.

The Death Eaters yelled the same tired taunts at her, calling her a blood traitor and scum. 

After they slammed the door shut, leaving only the familiar sliver of light, the girl rose, unsteady in the knees like a newborn unicorn.

“Hello, young lady,” Ollivander greeted her. 

She turned, pale locks of hair sticking to a dark smear on her face, and said cautiously, “Who’s there?”

Ollivander pushed himself slowly off the floor. It would be a sad day indeed when Ollivander couldn’t properly greet a young witch. “John Ollivander, at your service,” he said.

“Luna Lovegood,” she said, smiling at him. Even through the dirt and blood on her face, he could tell it was genuine. “We’ve met already.”

Ollivander laughed, a rusty sound that sent him coughing. “It’s a rare day when I come across a youngster I haven’t,” he replied. “Unicorn hair – or perhaps I shouldn’t remind you of the wand you haven’t got.”

“I’m pleased you remember me,” Luna said. “Have you been here the whole time you’ve been missing?”

“From here it doesn’t much feel like I’m missing, child,” he said. “But yes, for the most part.”

There was no need to share the details of his horrors with an innocent.

“That’s terrible,” she said, looking at him in concern. A drop of blood fell to the floor.

“I’ve some water,” he said, ignoring the light feeling in his chest. “Let’s clean you up.”

The cellar didn’t seem quite as oppressive as it had the hour before.

*

Luna spent her first few weeks attempting to escape.

Ollivander couldn’t bring himself to tell her he’d already tried everything – she looked so hopeful every time she got a new idea, each more outlandishly innovative than the last – and so he did what he could to help her.

Unlike his previous cell mates, Luna did not grow frustrated and angry and violent as she failed to escape. She simply got more creative, and Ollivander himself grew hopeful, even though the sensible voice in the back of his head told him that hope was futile.

Between attempts, Luna talked about strange things: creatures and theories and historical anecdotes, vague stories about her friendships and family and the things she hoped to see out in the world. 

Ollivander enjoyed these moments most, and repaid Luna the kindness she was doing him by telling her of places he’d been and people and creatures he’d met and the mysterious draw wandlore held for him.

She didn’t respond skeptically to his stories of wands’ personalities and the more inexplicable magic involved in wandlore, but rather with avid interest and unerring faith.

Ollivander’s laugh was no longer rusty.

*

When he realized that Luna had stopped coming up with new plans to escape after the attempt to replicate a skwlog’s cry failed, Ollivander began to worry.

Over the past few weeks, he’d begun to feel rejuvenated. Luna’s presence had seemingly shone a beacon of light into his squalid existence, and in the darkest moments, at least he no longer feared dying alone and forgotten. 

He tried not to dwell on that; the idea that Luna was just as likely to die here as he was terrible to consider. Her life was worth more than simply comfort to an old man, though he selfishly clung to her as a lifeline.

He tried to make his own suggestions, and she just looked at him with her pale strange eyes and said, “It’s okay, Mr. Ollivander. I understand.”

“We’re going to make it, I promise” he told her. The words felt chalky and awkward; he couldn’t remember lying to her before.

“I hope we do,” she replied, “but I’m afraid someone else is going to have to be responsible.”

That was the first time he hugged her, wrapping his old weak arms around her increasingly thin frame and holding her close. 

She pressed her cheek to his chest and said, “I like the sound of your heartbeat. It chases away the shadows.”

That, Ollivander realized, was more beautiful than anything a lover had ever told him.

She fell asleep with her ear pressed to his heart, and he stroked her tangled pale hair - like catching a unicorn, he thought fleetingly - until he, too, drifted to sleep.

*

Ollivander was trying to find the words to describe to Luna what it felt like when a potential wand core matched itself to a piece of wood when she pressed her lips against his.

He froze, suddenly intimately aware of every aspect of his body and being, the way the stone wall bit into his back and the way Luna’s hand rested lightly over his own, the warmth of her breast pressed lightly into his side and the press of her lips, the way his body ached and creaked with the familiar signs of age.

“Child,” he breathed when she pulled back. “You can’t--”

“Mr. Ollivander,” she said calmly, tilting her head. She never broke eye contact. “I like you. I enjoy talking to you, and you don’t laugh at me. You’re kind.”

“I’m an old man,” he said. 

“That doesn’t matter,” she said. 

“It does,” he insisted. “Don’t waste your heart on me, child. I’m not worth it.”

“I’m not wasting my heart,” she said, “and if you don’t believe you’re worth it, then you haven’t been listening.”

Ollivander slowly pulled his hand out from under Luna’s. “Luna.”

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” she said, and Ollivander hoped he never heard that tiny broken note in her voice again.

“Come here,” he said, and hugged her close. “You mean more to me than I can say, Luna, but I can’t be that person for you.”

She motioned around their cell. “Even though we’re here... I’m glad I know you, Mr. Ollivander.”

“I’m thankful I know you, too,” he replied, and realized too late that she was now listening to his racing heart.

*

Things didn’t precisely change - they were still prisoners, there was still the ever-present threat of being taken upstairs by the Death Eaters, there was still no room and little light and less food - but after Luna kissed him...

Ollivander began to notice things more.

He noticed the way the little bit of light they had hit her hair, the way she could come up with things to laugh over even in these dire circumstances and the way she made him feel, the mix of joy and comfort and gratefulness that was a heady combination to an old man like himself.

He realized how much she touched him, the innocent brush of hands, gentle pats and strokes down his arm, the press of her leg against his when she sat close to share their rations.

Every touch now sent a thrill through his body, thrills he’d almost forgotten. He felt giddy as a teenager, and the lectures he gave himself were increasingly rigorous.

Luna, for her part, simply stated with clarity what she felt and why she felt it. 

Ollivander’s resolve weakened with every passing day.

He told himself it had nothing to do with the increasing certainty he had that they were never leaving this cellar.

*

When he did finally kiss her, it was strangely anticlimactic.

She smiled her same sweet smile, the one he’d seen a thousand times before and still cherished. “I hope we get out of here,” she said.

“I do too,” Ollivander replied, knowing that the likelihood was slim. He could remember Luna’s wand clearly - unyielding and good for charmwork.

“Even if we don’t, though,” Luna said, “things aren’t all bad.”

“No,” Ollivander said, voice thick. “No, they aren’t all bad at all.”

Somewhere upstairs, someone screamed. From joy or pain, Ollivander could no longer tell.

He pulled Luna close and hoped she might have a future.


End file.
